Congress enacted the School Breakfast Program on a pilot basis in the Child Nutrition Act of 1966. The measure was signed into law by President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who himself was a former school teacher, despite criticism by some members of Congress, including Sen. S.L. Holland from Florida, who was concerned that “once federal aid for such a program starts, it almost never ends.” Holland was considered by some to be a racist segregation proponent who opposed enactment of civil rights.
Still, because many children living in poverty in urban areas were left out of the pilot breakfast program, the Black Panthers initiated their own school breakfast program in 1969, called the Free Breakfast for School Children Program. The Black Panthers’ program was successful, with accounts of improved behavior among participating children who no longer fell “asleep in class” or cried over “stomach cramps” from hunger. In just one year (1969-1970), the Black Panthers’ program, which the party’s archivist calls “one of the biggest and baddest things we ever did,” is reported to have fed free breakfast to roughly 20,000 children. It is this positive image of the Black Panthers that some speculate caused Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director J. Edgar Hoover to mount an attack on the program in 1969. To undermine the Black Panthers’ program, FBI agents went door to door, telling parents of participating children that food being provided by the Black Panthers was infected with venereal disease and that the Black Panthers were teaching their children to be racists.
Although there are no reports of a Black Panthers’ Free Breakfast Program having operated in Florida, the Black Panthers are credited with prodding the country to expand USDA’s School Breakfast Program. Today, all schools in Florida are required to operate a School Breakfast Program, which benefits children of every race and ethnicity, including children of color, who experience poverty and food insecurity at a greater rate due to the systemic racism that their parents face.
In March 2024, the School Breakfast Program served over 11 million breakfasts to school children in Florida.